Benjamin Jesty was a farmer at Yetminster in Dorset, England. He is notable as perhaps the first person recorded to have vaccinated with Cowpox in order to artificially induce immunity to Smallpox. Unlike Jenner he did not, and would not have been in a position to, publicise the procedure, which he carried out on his wife and children in the face of a smallpox epidemic in 1774. Yetminster is a village in north west Dorset, England, five miles south west of Sherborne. ... Dorset (pronounced DOR-sit or [dÉ”.sÉ™t], and sometimes in the past called Dorsetshire) is a county in the south-west of England, on the English Channel coast. ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London (de facto) Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2006 est. ... Vaccination is the process of administering weakened or dead pathogens to a healthy person or animal, with the intent of conferring immunity against a targeted form of a related disease agent. ... Cowpox is a disease of the skin caused by a virus (Cowpox virus) that is related to the Vaccinia virus. ... Smallpox (also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera) is a highly contagious disease unique to humans. ... Portrait of Edward Jenner Edward Jenner, FRS, (May 17, 1749 – January 26, 1823) was an English country doctor who studied nature and his natural surroundings from childhood and practiced medicine in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England. ... In epidemiology, an epidemic (from Greek epi- upon + demos people) is a disease that appears as new cases in a given human population, during a given period, at a rate that substantially exceeds what is expected, based on recent experience (the number of new cases in the population during a...

Later he moved to Worth Matravers, a Dorset village near the coast, and he and his wife are buried in a prominent position in the churchyard there with an inscription crediting him for his amazing work in helping Jenner create a vaccine for the smallpox epedemic. Worth Matravers is a small village in the Purbeck district of Dorset, England, situated on the cliffs west of Swanage, with a population of 644. ...

Jesty's tomb